Life beyond Project Online exists, and it can be a huge improvement. Project Online is closing its doors today, that is, if you are reading this article on the day that it came out. It is, however, more likely that you are reading this on a later date, in which case this is a reminder that life did go on and in a lot of cases improved after Microsoft stopped the service for this lovely Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management solution.
In this short article I’d like to take a look at what organizations are not missing from the Project Online era and what has improved for them. Taking a Projectum xPM viewpoint (note that I do work for Context&, the company behind the product).
A day to remember: 30 September 2026
If your LinkedIn feed is something like mine, it’s not a big surprise that you already know all about what’s happening. Project Online, one of the key Enterprise PPM solutions created by Microsoft, is turned off today.
There has been a big ramp up on messages describing people’s first moments working with the tool. And even people remembering the first MS Project DOS interfaces and sharing those. Be aware though, it’s “Only Project Online” that’s closing the doors. Microsoft Project the desktop application still exists and can be used after today.
Looking ahead: What can modern tools do better?
Project Online wasn’t very flexible
“without using a lot of code”
Project Online was a system built on top of the SharePoint Online Platform.
- You could configure PWA settings, fields, views, workflows, permissions, and reporting, but you could not redesign or replace the underlying service architecture.
- You did not have direct access to the SQL database or control over server-side components.
- Custom code and integrations were limited to supported interfaces and extension points.
One common missing element that always struck me: the Owner field couldn’t be easily changed in the system to state a different label. You didn’t have a way to alter the label to, for instance “Project Manager”.
Enter The Power Platform!
Once we heard that Project Online wasn’t getting any more feature updates we looked to alternatives. This became the Power Platform and Projectum xPM (first version: Power PPM).
Projectum xPM is flexible.
The Microsoft Power Platform allows us this flexibility. Don’t have a table describing your product catalogue? Building it is easy and security layers are native to the platform.
I’ve talked about Projectum xPM before, and if you are curious about what it contains and what it can do, I think this webinar recording is where to go:
And yes, with our solution you do have the option to alter the label of the Owner field ;-).
Accelerated innovation
Project Online closing has been met with understandable frustration, a lot of organisations relied on its capabilities. But closing it did something good as well:
Closing Project Online accelerated innovation.
With the announcement, multiple Microsoft Project Partners scrambled and designed their own solutions. Even Planner, Microsoft’s own solution, has recently put out a lot of great new features. And there are fresh new ideas on how to create Enterprise Portfolio Management software.
Final notes
Thank you for reading this last article about Project Online. If you want to know more, you can of course join me at the MPUG Roundtable event (with a slightly different name): Life After Project Online: A Community Roundtable | MPUG